The Ohio State University entomologist has a lot of hungry mouths to feed. Jones has nearly
1,000 bedbugs in her West Campus lab, a number that will grow when she expands her research.

Since 2003, she's led a team that's hunted the insects in the nooks and crannies of homes across
Ohio.

"We found some in a big screen TV, which is kind of odd," said Andrew Hoelmer, a graduate
student who works with Jones.

"The people had been sleeping in their beds, but once they realized they had a bed infestation,
they moved to the couch in front of the TV and the bedbugs followed."

Their work has picked up. A lot. Parts of the state, including Columbus, are seeing huge bedbug
infestations.

And when she's not out hunting the parasites, Jones studies them in her lab. She keeps colonies
of bedbugs sequestered in jars surrounded by a protective "moat" that thwarts any escape
attempts.

She feeds them blood from private suppliers with a $3,000 machine that mimics human skin, down
to the breathing and body temperature. But she needs more blood and has asked the American Red
Cross for discarded blood to feed her research subjects.

Jones, who also studies termites, has tested how well various bug traps and extermination
products fight bedbugs.

So far, she doesn't have good news.

The traps often are little more than strips of cardboard with dry ice sandwiched in between. If
they do catch bedbugs, it's by pure luck, Jones said.

As for pesticides, there's no silver bullet. Few products do the job, and even professional
exterminators can miss a few stowaways, which is enough to prolong an infestation, she said.

The problem? Bedbugs are hardy.

Most pesticides are ineffective, and the ones that do work need a direct hit, said Dini Miller,
a Virginia Tech entomologist.

This means that exterminators can't clear a room with a single spray. Instead, they must hunt
down the insects, spray them directly and overwhelm their defenses with toxins, she said.

Beyond chemical warfare, Jones is looking deeper. She and others are studying the genetic traits
that might help the bug resist pesticides.

During the 1950s and '60s, widespread use of the pesticide DDT largely eradicated bedbugs in the
United States.

With the bugs mostly gone, research waned
. Scientists couldn't get funding because bedbugs weren't an issue, said Jason
Rasgon, an Entomologist at Johns Hopkins University.

"When compared with insects that transmit malaria, bedbugs weren't really high on the radar," he
said.

But then DDT was phased out, and any bedbugs that had immunity to the pesticide or had gone into
hiding began their comeback, said Allen Szalanski, an Arkansas University entomologist.

The revival left researchers playing catch-up.

Bedbugs are hot again, and funding started flowing for new research. That's where Jones and
Szalanski fit in. They were the natural, if reluctant, choices for bedbug work because they'd both
studied other urban pests, like the termite.

"Everybody was calling me desperate for help with bedbugs," Jones said. "It is right now the
pest of the day, and it's going to be the pest of the future."

Before he dove into bedbug research, Szalanski focused on insect-borne diseases. He has found
that bedbug populations can adapt quickly because the insects hitchhike across the country.

Bedbugs stow away in suitcases, hide out in hotel rooms and catch rides with migrating birds and
bats that nest on houses, he said. From there, they catch rides to all sorts of places, including
schools, theaters and stores.

"In some colleges, they've gone through and fumigated the whole dorm, but after Christmas break,
the bedbugs are back," Szalanski said. "The bugs find their way into student luggage."

The poultry industry also has become a sort of mass-transit system for the insect, he said. He's
found millions of the bugs living on breeder birds, which are sent across the country.

Poultry facilities "are so bad that if you walk in there even with a (protective suit), you'll
still get bedbugs on you," he said. "Poultry workers could be moving bedbugs from one place to
another."

That kind of movement means trouble if scientists find a new weapon to fight the pest. Bedbugs
in one town could develop resistance, and it wouldn't take long for that immunity to spread to
other areas, he said.

One bedbug can lay 500 eggs, which means a single stowaway can cause a lot of trouble.

"If you just had a few show up in your house and if they have good access to food you may not
see anything one day, but then two months later you're overwhelmed by bedbugs," Szalanski said.